Getting Started

Hello out there! My name is Hollie, I'm 22, and I'm a biking noob. Yep, that's right a noob. The last time I rode an actual bike was probably about 7 or 8 years ago. I had this cheapo little 12 speed mountain bike that I wasn't really in love with but it did the job. Every couple of days when it was warm I'd get the urge to ride my bike around the neighborhood. I'd ride and ride until I was so tired I couldn't ride anymore. I guess once I got further into my teen years my bike wasn't quite so fun anymore, and I quickly tossed it to the side.

The question that you might be asking yourself now is "Why are you blogging about bikes?" Well, it's a long story. I blame this on my friends, Chris and Jason. For Christmas this year Jason didn't really know what to get his wife, Chris. He decided the best way to figure out what to get her was to go wandering around wal-mart to see what caught his eyes. If you ask Jason he'd tell you, the moment he walked into the bike aisle and saw that purple beach cruiser his mind was made up. He stopped by my house to show me how awesome Chris' Christmas gift was going to be, and I was jealous. Chris loved her bike, and soon after receiving it bought Jason the same bike in black.

With the weird weather we have here in Indiana, there have been a few days already this year where it's been perfect bike riding weather. Each time we've had this beautiful weather, Chris would tell me about how her and Jason had gone riding around their neighborhood on their bikes. She'd also bug me about getting a bike. The more I listened to her talk about riding her bike the more I missed riding even if it was just around the neighborhood. I knew that I wanted to get a bike to ride around. I had started to look at bikes at different major retail stores, and I hadn't been super impressed by them. They seemed to be rather poorly constructed, and they were all too "modern" looking.  I had casually mentioned to my boyfriend, G, that I really wanted to get a bike, and that's where this whole thing began.

G is rather handy and can build and make just about anything. While we were talking about bikes, he said it would be really fun to build a bike together. I totally agreed with him. I loved the idea of building something together. After our initial conversation, G had said that he was pretty sure that his dad had an old bike frame sitting around in his garage. Sure enough on our next visit we found an old Schwinn bike frame sitting in the garage. Upon looking at the bike frame we determined it was an old Hollywood frame. It looked like it was from the '50s or '60s, and I was definitely in love with it.G asked his dad if he was doing anything with the frame, and his dad said that he wasn't and told us we could do whatever we wanted with it. That night we spent a few hours looking at different old Schwinn bikes on e-bay and discussed possible paint colors for the bike.

Literally the next day we started the process of fixing up the Schwinn Hollywood for me to ride around. I'm super excited. Like I said before, I really don't know much about bikes. However, I love to learn, and I'm taking this project as an opportunity to learn more about bikes and biking in general. I thought one of the best ways to remember this project with G would be to start a blog documenting our process for our friends, family, and any one else interested in fixing up bikes. On this blog, you'll get to see our progress, hear about the different things I'm learning, and hear funny stories from our journey.  I look forward to sharing this process with you guys!

Keep your eyes out for my next post where I'll be sharing a little bit about our experience painting the frame of the bike!